Research Papers & Analysis

The 2014 European elections confirmed the prominence in the media of what is commonly called the far right. While parties such as the Front National and UKIP were successful in the elections, their performance has since been exaggerated and they have benefited from a disproportionate coverage. Aiding their apparently ‘irresistible rise’, their normalisation was greatly facilitated by their description as ‘populist’ parties. However, while this term ‘populism’ has been almost universally accepted in the media, it remains a hotly debated concept on the academic circuit, and its careless use could in fact prove counterproductive in the assessment of the current state of democracy in Europe. Instead of focusing on the reasons behind the rise of these parties, similarities and differences already widely covered in the literature, this article hypothesises that a skewed and disproportionate coverage of the European elections in particular, and the ‘rise’ of ‘right-wing populism’ in general, have prevented a thorough democratic discussion from taking place and impeded the possibility of other political alternatives.

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In the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, neoliberal governments embarked on austerity programs that include reducing public services, imposing public sector wage restraint, and reorganizing public sector working conditions and labour relations. In this context of economic crisis and austerity, populism has risen across North America and Europe on both the right and left of the political spectrum. The rise of right populism in particular confronts unions with key organizational and strategic challenges as neoliberal governments seek to mobilize right populist discourses in their efforts to restructure work and labour relations. Using a socio-geographic framework, and based on an examination of post-2008 legislative and policy measures undertaken at the federal, provincial, municipal levels in Canada, this paper explores the nexus between “uneven austerity”, rising populism, and union strategic capacities. We examine this intersection of austerity and populism at multiple scales to reveal the implications for organized labour.

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Populist radical right (PRR) parties are on the rise in Western Europe. Where do the electoral successes of these parties come from? First, it has been shown that the opening of borders has fuelled the divide between the ‘losers’ and ‘winners’ of globalisation. The ‘losers’ are individuals who feel threatened by international competition. They vote for PRR parties because they agree with their nativist, populist and Eurosceptic positions. Second, various social and political developments have facilitated the success of these parties. Some examples of these developments are increased electoral volatility, the ideological convergence of the mainstream parties, and increasing immigration and unemployment. Third, PRR parties themselves are, to a large extent, responsible for their own successes. Without their increasingly moderated messages and profiles, their often appealing external and internal leaders, and their well-institutionalised party organisations, their (long-term) successes would not have been possible. Most probably, the PRR party family will remain with us for a while.

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Through the analysis of the ideology of two Hungarian parties typically considered as populist, this paper investigates how elitism can be integrated into an overall populist appeal. The two parties, Fidesz and Jobbik, are shown to offer two different formulae to the challenges that affect many authoritarian populist movements, but they both exhibit features of paternalist populism and illiberal elitism. With regard to Jobbik, the paper uncovers the existence of three distinct ideologies: right-wing populist; ultra-nationalist; and traditionalist and ‘meta-nationalist.’ The paper directs attention to the layered nature of partisan ideological discourses.

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There are several disputes on what populism is, but currently there is probably greater controversy over how to measure it. If we focus on populism as discourse, we can see that there is little ontological consensus. Here, the resolution of epistemological controversies is much less auspicious. In fact, types of methodological approaches and techniques differ substantively. This review article analyses three perspectives on populism, which are representative of three contemporary efforts to assess populism as discourse: first, the poststructuralist approach based on Laclau’s theory; second, a mixed approach based on positivism, but employing hermeneutic techniques of textual analysis known as holistic grading; and third, content analysis, which is the most classical of these approaches, and the most quantitative, being based on counting phrases within texts. In spite of these differences, the approaches are in certain agreement: they employ a similar concept of populism, they accept that populism as discourse is triggered by certain structural factors and they identify the presence of a leader to catalyse populist discourse.

This volume, covering twenty-five populist parties in seventeen European states, presents the first comparative study of the impact of the Great Recession on populism.

Based on a common analytical framework, chapters offer a highly differentiated view of how the interplay between economic and political crises helped produce patterns of populist development across Europe.

Populism grew strongly in Southern and Central-Eastern Europe, particularly where an economic crisis developed in tandem with a political one. Nordic populism went also on the rise, but this region’s populist parties have been surprisingly responsible. In Western Europe, populism actually contracted during the crisis – with the exception of France.

As for the two Anglo-Saxon countries, while the UK has experienced the rise of a strong anti-European populist force, Ireland stands out as a rare case in which no such a party has risen in spite of the severity of its economic and political crises.

In most countries, men are more likely to vote for parties of the populist radical right (PRR) than women. The authors argue here that there are two mechanisms that might potentially explain this gender gap: mediation (women’s attitudes and characteristics differ from men’s in ways that explain the PRR vote) and moderation (women vote for different reasons than men). They apply these two mechanisms to general theories of support for PRR parties—the socio-structural model, the discontent model, and the policy vote model—and test these on a large sample of voters in seventeen Western and Eastern European countries. The study shows that the gender gap is produced by a combination of moderation and mediation. Socio-structural differences between men and women exist, but the extent to which they explain the gender gap is limited, and primarily restricted to post-Communist countries. Furthermore, women generally do not differ from men in their level of nativism, authoritarianism or discontent with democracy. Among women, however, these attitudes are less strongly related to a radical-right vote. This suggests that men consider the issues of the radical right to be more salient, but also that these parties deter women for reasons other than the content of their political programme. While the existing research has focused almost exclusively on mediation, we show that moderation and mediation contribute almost equally to the gender gap.

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Why do more men than women vote for populist radical-right (PRR) parties? And do more men than women still vote for the PRR? Can attitudes regarding gender and gender equality explain these differences (if they exist)? These are the questions that Spierings and Zaslove explore in this article. They begin with an analysis of men’s and women’s voting patterns for PRR parties in seven countries, comparing these results with voting for mainstream (left-wing and right-wing) parties. They then examine the relationship between attitudes and votes for the populist radical right, focusing on economic redistribution, immigration, trust in the European Union, law and order, environmental protection, personal freedom and development, support for gender equality, and homosexuality. They conclude that more men than women do indeed support PRR parties, as many studies have previously demonstrated. However, the difference is often overemphasized in the literature, in part since it is examined in isolation and not compared with voting for (centre-right) mainstream parties. Moreover, the most important reasons that voters support PRR parties seem to be the same for men and for women; both vote for the populist radical right because of their opposition to immigration. In general, there are no consistent cross-country patterns regarding gender attitudes explaining differences between men and women. There are some recurring country-specific findings though. Most notably: first, among women, economic positions seem to matter less; and economically more left-wing (and those with anti-immigrant attitudes) women also vote for the PRR in Belgium, France, Norway and Switzerland; and, second, those who hold authoritarian or nativist views in combination with a strong belief that gays and lesbians should be able to ‘live their lives as they choose’ are disproportionately much more likely to vote for PRR parties in Sweden and Norway. Despite these findings, Spierings and Zaslove argue that the so-called ‘gender gap’ is often overemphasized. In other words, it appears that populist radical-right parties, with respect to sex and gender, are in many ways simply a more radical version of centre-right parties.

In this book review symposium, Jan Biba, Jeffrey Edward Green and John P. McCormick take on the work of democratic theorist, Nadia Urbinati. In Democracy Disfigured: Opinion, Truth and the People, Urbinati argues for what she calls a ‘diarchic’ conception of democracy, whereby opinion and will formation must not collapse into one another (hence diarchy rather than mono-archy). This has implications for how we think about issues such as representation and pluralism. It also means that Urbinati is sceptical of populism, whether of the left or the right. The problem with populism is that opinion and will formation collapse in the figure of the people. Accordingly, for Urbinati, the people can and should be understood as a plurality, as never one with itself and only existing through representations of it. Her argument also has implications for the question of equality. As she argues, in a diarchic version of democracy, political equality is to be valued very highly, and she argues for the importance of campaign finance reform. Thus, with Urbinati’s diarchic democracy we get a conception of democracy that is liberal, pluralist and representative, but also highly critical of actually existing forms of democracy.

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Syriza has increased its domestic popularity even as it confronts deep institutional resistance to its anti-austerity agenda. Yannis Stavrakakis argues that, in voicing the ‘despair and demands’ of the Greek people, Syriza has been able to convert populism in opposition into charismatic leadership in power.

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Conceptually, populism has no specific relationship to gender; in fact, gender differences, like all other differences within ‘the people’, are considered secondary, if not irrelevant, to populist politics. Yet populist actors do not operate in a cultural or ideological vacuum. So perhaps it is the national culture and broader ideology used by populists that determine their gender position. To explore this argument, we compare prototypical cases of contemporary populist forces in two regions: the Dutch Partij voor de Vrijheid (PVV, Party for Freedom) and the Dansk Folkeparti (DF, Danish People’s Party) in Northern Europe, and the Partido Socialista Unido de Venezuela (PSUV, United Socialist Party of Venezuela) and the Bolivian Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS, Movement for Socialism) in South America. Populists in Northern Europe are predominantly right-wing, yet mobilize within highly emancipated societies, while populists in South America are mainly left-wing and mobilize in strongly patriarchal societies. Our analysis provides a somewhat muddled picture. Although populists do not necessarily have a clear view on gender issues, the latter are clearly influenced by ideology and region. While left-wing populists tend to be relatively progressive within their traditional South American context, right-wing populists mainly defend the status quo in their progressive Northern European context. However, in absolute terms, the relatively high level of gender equality already achieved in Northern Europe is at least as advanced as the one proposed by the populists in South America.

Although scholarship on the general ideological orientation of right-wing populist parties is well established, few scholars have studied their ideas about gender. De Lange and Mügge therefore ask how differences in ideology shape right-wing populist parties’ ideas on gender. Drawing on the qualitative content analysis of party manifestos, they compare the gender ideologies and concrete policy proposals of national and neoliberal populist parties in the Netherlands and Flanders from the 1980s to the present. They find that some parties adhere to a modern or modern-traditional view, while others espouse neo-traditional views. Moreover, some right-wing populist parties have adopted gendered readings of issues surrounding immigration and ‘Islam’, while others have not. The variation in stances on ‘classical’ gender issues can be explained by the genealogy and ideological orientation of the parties, whereas gendered views on immigration and Islam are influenced by contextual factors, such as 9/11.

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Is the relationship between populist leaders and those in their parties always charismatic? Although many scholars of populism assume this, the attribution of ‘charisma’ is invariably based on how leaders present themselves rather than how purported followers within parties perceive them. In line with the literature on charisma, this article takes the latter approach, using interviews conducted between 2009 and 2011 with 111 elected representatives and grassroots members (i.e. ‘the coterie’) to examine how three European populist leaders regularly termed ‘charismatic’ – Silvio Berlusconi, Christoph Blocher and Umberto Bossi – were viewed within their parties. The article finds evidence of three different leadership types, with Bossi very clearly satisfying the conditions for coterie charisma, Berlusconi largely (but not entirely) fulfilling them, and Blocher only partially doing so. Finally, it presents new data showing the very damaging effects of Bossi’s subsequent downfall on his party’s organisation.

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Populism is a concept that is currently in vogue among political commentators and is, more often than not, used pejoratively. The phenomenon of populism is typically seen as something adverse and, in the European context, routinely related to xenophobic politics. What populism exactly is and who its representatives across Europe are, however, often remains unclear. This text has two main aims: to identify populist parties in 21st-century Europe and to explain their electoral performance. It argues that populist parties should not be dismissed as dangerous pariahs out of hand but, rather, that their rise tells us something about the state of representative democracy. The study also shows that the performance of populist parties is to a large extend dependent on their own ability to present themselves as credible alternatives to the established parties.

The study has a broad scope, including populist parties of various ideological kinds – thus moving beyond examples of the ‘right’ – and covering long-established Western European countries as well as post-communist countries in Central and Eastern Europe. It presents the results of an innovative mixed-methods research project, combining a fuzzy set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA) of 31 European countries with three in-depth case studies of the Netherlands, Poland and the United Kingdom.

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Within less than two years of being founded by disgruntled members of the governing CDU, the newly formed Alternative for Germany (AfD) party has already performed extraordinarily well in the 2013 general election, the 2014 EP election, and a string of state elections. Highly unusually by German standards, it campaigned for an end to all efforts to save the euro and argued for a reconfiguration of Germany’s foreign policy. This seems to chime with the recent surge in far-right voting in Western Europe, and the AfD was subsequently described as right-wing populist and Europhobe.

This article examines the fortunes of the recently created Five Star Movement, a party that at its first general election in February 2013 became the most voted for party in Italy. It explains the success of this new party through citizens’ demands, patterns of party competition and institutional rules. Building on the interplay between popular demands and party supply, the study examines the overall political stance of this party and how it fits the policy priorities of citizens. By comparing it with other parties, the article investigates how the Five Star Movement distinguished itself from its competitors. Finally, the article examines how the electoral system has limited its emergence.

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From the protesters in Cairo’s Tahrir Square to the Tea Party in the United States to the campaign to elect indigenous leader Evo Morales in Bolivia, modern populist movements command international attention and compel political and social change. When citizens demand “power to the people,” they evoke corrupt politicians, imperialists, or oligarchies that have appropriated power from its legitimate owners. These stereotypical narratives belie the vague and often contradictory definitions of the concept of “the people” and the many motives of those who use populism as a political tool.

In The Promise and Perils of Populism, Carlos de la Torre assembles a group of international scholars to explore the ambiguous meanings and profound implications of grassroots movements across the globe. These trenchant essays explore how fragile political institutions allow populists to achieve power, while strong institutions confine them to the margins of political systems. Their comparative case studies illuminate how Latin American, African, and Thai populists have sought to empower marginalized groups of people, while similar groups in Australia, Europe, and the United States often exclude people whom they consider to possess different cultural values. While analyzing insurrections in Latin America, advocacy groups in the United States, Europe, and Australia, and populist parties in Asia and Africa, the contributors also pose questions and agendas for further research.

This volume on contemporary populism from a comparative perspective could not be more timely, and scholars from a variety of disciplines will find it an invaluable contribution to the literature.

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Although there is growing research interest in populist radical right (PRR) parties in Western Europe, little attention has been paid to the case of Spain – a country where these parties are almost non-existent or irrelevant from an electoral and political point of view. In a nutshell, we maintain that in contemporary Spain there is real demand for PRR parties, but three supply-side factors are impeding their electoral breakthrough and persistence: the cleavage structure of the country, the strategy of competition of the mainstream right and the electoral system. At the same time, we postulate that at least in the case of Spain the Great Recession has not improved the electoral odds of the PRR as such but rather facilitated the emergence of leftist populist forces.

The aim of this article is to investigate “antipopulism” as a distinct discursive repertoire that marginalizes “the people” as the legitimizing cornerstone of democracy. After providing an account of the Greek post-democratic transition from the mid-nineties onwards, I will then delve into what could be described as the “populism/anti-populism” ideologicopolitical divide, as it manifests in the Greek political system and also on the European level during the past few years, and especially within the ongoing crisis. The main hypothesis is that “anti-populism” can be seen as a crucial aspect of post-democracy, introducing what could be described as a peculiar Ideological State Apparatus in the Althusserian sense; a way to marginalize disagreement and democratic dissensus and discipline a public sphere in an age dominated by technocratic virtue, expert knowledge and ‘consensus politics’.

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The 2012 legislative elections in Romania have promoted a newly emerged political actor to the parliamentary arena. One year after its official creation the People’s Party Dan Diaconescu (PPDD) has mobilised a relevant amount of electoral support, ending third as the number of seats in Parliament. This article seeks to explain the political development of this populist party until its 2012 success. It uses a qualitative analysis based on primary (manifesto, organisational structure) and secondary (media reports, surveys) data. The analysis focuses on three dimensions: institutions (political competitors and party organisation), ideology, and attitudes (of the elites and voters).

While the literature on populism is rich on specifying the characteristics of populist movements that distinguishes them from non-populists, much less attention has been paid on distinguishing between different types of populist movements. In this article we highlight and account for divergent trajectories of populist practice in two major emerging economies—Argentina and Turkey. We stress that both the Kirchner governments of Argentina and the Erdoğan governments of Turkey closely fit to the populist pattern of rule, yet a close analysis of their policies suggests a left-wing type of populism in Argentina and a right-wing type in Turkey. Beyond identifying divergent strands of populism in two national contexts, we also explain the mix of domestic and external factors that accounts for this contrasting pattern.

Populism is usually studied by looking at the electoral and rhetorical strategies of parties considered to be populist. In contrast, this article attempts to measure the support for the core propositions of populism among voters and explain the social differences in that support. On the basis of a survey of the Dutch-speaking population of Belgium (N: 2,330) we find that this support for populism turns out not to be directly influenced by a weak or uncertain economic position, by dissatisfaction with personal life or feelings of anomie. Support for populism appears foremost as a consequence of a very negative view of the evolution of society – declinism – and of the feeling of belonging to a group of people that is unfairly treated by society.

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Populist movements have become key players in European politics. These movements are readily criticized by journalists or political rivals, yet none of the common objections to populism seems to arrest their success. This article turns to normative political theory to cultivate sensitivity to problems arising from some existing arguments against populism, and to explore possible alternatives. It offers a critical reading of prototypical liberal and conservative arguments against populism, and proposes that the principles of solidarity and procedure provide good grounds for a sustainable critique of populism.

Populist parties increasingly take a welfare chauvinistic position. They criticize mainstream parties for cutting and slashing welfare at the expense of the ‘native’ population and to the benefit of the ‘undeserving’ immigrant. Given the electoral success of populist parties, we investigate whether and when mainstream parties ignore, attack or accommodate welfare chauvinism. Using key theories of party behaviour, we test whether mainstream parties (1) respond immediately to populist parties, (2) respond with a time lag, or (3) respond only when they lose elections or are in opposition. Our quantitative analyses of party manifestos, speeches and policies of European mainstream and populist parties (1980–2012) show that mainstream parties adapt to populist parties on welfare chauvinism, but which parties adapt and when varies significantly. In our in-depth examinations of the Dutch and Danish cases, we highlight important cross-country and cross-party differences.

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The purpose of this paper is to analyze the continuities or the “elective affinities” between the recent populist wave (or populist come back) in South America and the current Occupy Movement in order to trace the contours of an original populism at a global scale. The article starts with a brief definition of populism, continues with a brief evaluation of the recent return of populism in South America finishing with the analysis of the main connections with the current Occupy Movement: the experience of a crisis; the claims for more democracy and the exploration of a postneoliberal political economy. In societies with obscene levels of inequality such as what exists in many South American countries, populism does not seem to be a heresy or a pathology, but a rational alternative to solve problems rooted in a failed nation building processes. Increasing indignation as a generalize perception of non-experienced levels of inequality in the concentration of resources and power at the global level is at the basis of one can call a populist moment. It has to be discussed, if this populist moment also contains an original populist movement with global contours inside.

Many claim that populism in the Netherlands has grown over the last 10 years; that it spreads among mainstream parties; that its success has to do with the media, who pay more and more attention to populist parties and immigration issues; but that it is difficult to distinguish between political populism intended for the media and populism by the media. In a longitudinal content analysis of newspapers, television news, talk shows and party political broadcasts, covering seven elections in nearly 20 years, these claims are put to the test. The picture that emerges is far more ambiguous than publicized opinion suggests, with no clear trend but a downward one in 2012.

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Populism is a style of political discourse and practice that calls for the return of power to the people. The term populism derives from the Latin populus, referring both to a people, as in a political community, and to the common people, as in the masses. The populist tradition thus recalls the popular assemblies of ancient Athens and the plebeian councils of the Roman Republic. In modern politics, populism draws its force from the ideal of popular sovereignty, which holds that citizens are the fundamental source of power and authority in a legitimate political order. Populist actors and leaders claim to embody or represent the voice of the sovereign people, often dramatizing a conflict that pits the common people against elite concentrations of economic, cultural, or governmental power. Because it promises to return power to the people, and exposes fault lines in established orders, populism raises ongoing questions about the meanings, limits, and prospects of democracy.

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Ernesto Laclau has blazed a unique trail in political theory and philosophy since the early 1970s. In so doing, he has articulated a range of philosophical and theoretical currents into a coherent alternative to mainstream models and practices of conducting social and political science. The editors have focused on work in three key areas:

Post-Marxist Political Theory: Discourse, Hegemony, Signification

Laclau has developed an original conception of post-Marxist political theory that is grounded on a materialist theory of discourse. The latter is constructed from a range of theoretical and philosophical sources, including poststructuralism, psychoanalysis, linguistic theory and post-analytical philosophy. The centerpiece of this approach is the category of hegemony, which develops Antonio Gramsci’s seminal contribution to Marxist theory, and is in turn connected to a web of related concepts, including articulation, dislocation, the logics of equivalence and difference, political identification, myth and social imaginary. These ideas have informed a number of empirical and theoretical studies associated with the Essex School of Discourse Theory.

Analyzing Populism

A central concern of Laclau’s writings has been the question of populism, both in Latin America where hebegan his interrogation of the phenomenon (especially the experience of Peronism), and then in his engagement with the “new social movements” and socialist strategy more generally. The concept of populism becomes a general way of exploring the “primacy of politics” in society.

Critical Engagements

Laclau is first and foremost an engaged intellectual who has consistently sought to theorize contemporary events and reality, and to debate with the leading intellectual figures of the day, with respect to questions of political principle and strategy. His recent debates with Judith Butler and Slavoj Žižek in Contingency, Hegemony, Universality: Contemporary Dialogues on the Left, published in 2011 (London: Verso), exemplify this critical ethos. He continues to elaborate his approach by challenging and articulating related approaches, and by situating his work in connection to the democratic Left.

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This chapter examines the FN in the current French party system. It looks at the extent to which ‘dedemonization’ has changed the party’s strategic and programmatic profile. We ask whether these changes have affected the status of the party across three main aspects as political outsider, niche and radical party, and consider the internal and external stimuli for party modernization. We conclude that, despite the moderation of its rhetoric and the softer packaging of its policies, the FN has not yet shed its populist radical right profile, and that de-demonization is primarily a vote-maximizing strategy. De-demonization is increasingly putting the cordon sanitaire under pressure however, creating new competitive opportunities for the FN.

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Due to its electoral performance in the 2012 general elections, SYRIZA, a previously unknown Greek political formation of the radical left, gained unprecedented visibility within the European public sphere. How is this strong showing and the political message articulated by SYRIZA to be interpreted? Utilizing a discursive methodology, this paper puts to the test the two assumptions predominating in most available analyses, namely that SYRIZA articulates a populist rhetoric, that it constitutes a predominantly populist force; and, given the near-exclusive association of populism with extreme right-wing movements, that SYRIZA constitutes a populist danger for Europe. Our analysis concludes that SYRIZA’s discourse is indeed a distinct articulation of left-wing populism. However, this by no means vindicates the second part of the prevailing wisdom: SYRIZA’s portrayal as a dangerous force threatening fundamental European values. If, however, this is the case, then mainstream research orientations in the study of European populism may have to be reviewed.

A focus on crisis is a mainstay of the literature on contemporary populism. However, the links between populism and crisis remain under-theorized and undeveloped. This article puts forward a novel perspective for understanding this relationship, arguing that crisis does not just trigger populism, but that populism also attempts to act as a trigger for crisis. This is because crises are always mediated and ‘performed’. The article presents a six-step model of how populist actors ‘perform’ crisis, drawing on empirical examples from Europe, Latin America, North America and the Asia-Pacific region. It explains how the performance of crisis allows populist actors to pit ‘the people’ against a dangerous other, radically simplify the terrain of political debate and advocate strong leadership. It ultimately suggests that we should move from thinking of crisis as something purely external to populism, towards thinking about the performance of crisis as an internal core feature of populism.

Mainstream parties across Europe have been struggling for some time to counter the appeal of the populist radical right. With the rise of the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP), the British Conservative Party is now facing a similar challenge. We argue that, since this is the case, it makes sense to ask whether there are lessons it can learn from other countries – in particular Austria, where the centre-right People’s Party (ÖVP) has been competing against the populist radical right (most obviously, the Freedom Party) for almost three decades. In the course of so doing, the ÖVP has tried many ways to deal with the threat posed: treating the populist radical right as a pariah; adopting some of its policies and rhetoric; inviting it into coalition government; and finally pursuing a ‘dual-track’ approach. We evaluate each strategy in turn and find that none of them has enjoyed huge or lasting success. We conclude that the Conservatives need to realise that UKIP is not so much a problem to be solved as a situation to be managed. Seeking to toughen the Tory stance on immigration and asylum is unlikely to pay electoral dividends and carries with it considerable downsides in terms of the party’s credibility and reputation, as well as in terms of public policy. Moreover, even if a more restrictive stance does not prove entirely pointless or (worse) positively counterproductive, it imposes opportunity costs the Conservative Party should think twice before paying. All this suggests the value of a comparative approach to those wanting to understand the new dynamics in British politics.

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This article assesses the impact of populist radical right parties on national party systems in Western Europe. Has the emergence of this new party family changed the interaction of party competition within Western European countries? First, I look at party system change with regard to numerical and numerical–ideological terms. Second, I evaluate the effect populist radical right parties have had on the different dimensions of party systems. Third, I assess the claim that the rise of populist radical right parties has created bipolarizing party system. Fourth, I look at the effect the rise of the populist radical right has had on the logic of coalition formation. The primary conclusion is that, irrespective of conceptualization and operationalization, populist radical right parties have not fundamentally changed party systems in Western Europe.

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This chapter explores how scholars have conceptualized the relationship between Latin American populism and democracy. It analyzes different approaches to populism such as modernization and dependency theory, and current approaches that focus on discourse analysis and/or political strategies. The chapter focuses on the current wave of radical populism to explore the continuities and differences between “classical” populism of leaders such as Juan Perón, the “neopopulism” of Alberto Fujimori, and the radical populism of Hugo Chávez, Evo Morales, and Rafael Correa.

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With populist parties making electoral progress across the European continent, the question of what their electoral success means for contemporary democratic systems has gained increasing significance. This article investigates how two populist radical right parties, the Austrian FPÖ and the Dutch PVV, conceptualise democracy, based on a wide range of party documents released over recent decades. It builds upon recent academic consensus that the relationship between populism and democracy is best understood from a ‘minimalist’ perspective, seeing populism not as antagonistic to democracy, but as an ideology that conceptualises democracy primarily in terms of popular sovereignty. The article adds to the existing literature by demonstrating that we can extend this understanding of the populist conception of democracy in three aspects: the populist emphasis on state neutrality; a two-fold notion of equality; and the extension of the political sphere in society. Based upon these three issues, the article concludes by exploring how the populist conception of democracy relates to the most dominant form of democracy practised nowadays, liberal democracy, and to what extent it reflects changes in our democratic political culture.

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In today’s Europe, the word ‘populism’ usually refers to right-wing populism or the populist extreme right. Is, however, the concept of ‘populism’ the proper theoreticopolitical instrument through which such identifications should be perceived, categorized and debated? What are the implications (direct and indirect) of such a naming? And what are the risks for critical analysis and for democratic politics in the European context? The hypothesis explored in this essay is that sticking to a restrictive association between ‘populism’ and the extreme right poses certain dangers that have to be seriously taken into account, especially in times of crisis. For a start, it is often premised on a rather simplistic euro-centrism that reduces the broad conceptual spectrum covered by the category ‘populism’ in its global use to a very particular European experience and then essentializes the resulting association, over-extending its scope. In addition, the category ‘populism’ is often used to describe political forces, identities and discourses in which the role of ‘the people’ is only secondary or peripheral, to the extent that it has to coincide with strongly hierarchical and elitist visions of society. What complicates things even further is that, within the context of the European (economic and political) crisis, whoever questions/ resists the austerity agenda – especially on the left – is increasingly discredited and denounced as an irresponsible populist. Indeed, it is not by coincidence that doubts are increasingly voiced both in the theoretical and in the political literature regarding the rationale behind such a strong association between populism and the extreme right. A series of points will thus be raised that may help us develop a plausible theoretico-political strategy in the new emerging conditions from a discursive perspective.

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